Looks like Hanley's going to be a lot of peoples whipping boy this season, with some but not a great deal of justification.
We looked really strong going forward. Pundits were saying that we created more shots on target than any other team last season, so that's more than Barcelona, more than Man City, more than Tottenham, which for me is a massive positive. Another positive was Pukki getting a goal, as this takes all the pressure off in respect of people questioning can he do it in this league, well we now know the answer and not only can he score at this level, but he can do it against Liverpool a team that last year had the best home defence in the PL. 9 of our starting 11 had never played in the PL before and if they can show the character they showed last night after the horrendous start to the game / first half, we will have a good chance of staying up. Another positive was Krul who despite the score line had a really good game. I think Farke also did well last night, we stuck to our game, didn't panic, made some good subs at the right time and came across really well on TV. Klopp seems to really like & respect him and seemed impressed with our attacking play. This along with Webber's links to Liverpool could be good for potential loan players going forward.
Yes defensively we struggled, but this was away against the Champions of Europe, a team that put 4 past Barcelona. OG aside, I don't think any of our defenders individually stood out as being particularly bad, but collectively we were poor. I see some have singled out Hanley as being particularly poor position wise, but if anything it was probably Lewis & Arrons poor positioning which was more of an issue. After all it wasn't poor positioning that led to the OG it was poor footwork. Liverpool's front 3 attack the gaps between the CB's, CB & RB, CB & LB. In the first half Lewis / Arrons were defending too wide leaving a massive space between them and the CB's, which really suited Liverpool. The 2 CB's then had to reduce the space, but this meant the increasing the gap between them, which again suited Liverpool. A few people were moaning that McLean wasn't being particularly effective, but part of the reason for this was he was trying to cover for Aaron's going forward / make up for Aaron's poor positioning. I think for us zonal marking is ok for open play, but for set pieces particularly corners it isn't going to work, for us against most team in this division. Liverpool seemed to have a clear plan to match up their CB's against our full backs, which was perhaps most notable in the match up between Lewis & Van Dyke. Other than defensive positioning I think the main things that caught nearly all our players out, but particularly the younger players was the pace of the game. It's just so much quicker in the PL. For most of the games last season the likes of Aaron's, Lewis & Godfrey were a lot quicker than most of their opponents and this allowed them to be slightly our of position and burst forward, knowing that their speed was going to allow them to get back, that isn't going to be the case this year. All our players need to realise that they are not going to have as much time on the ball against PL team as they did in the Championship, particularly when playing out against pressing teams. On the positive side DF appear to be able to adapt things at half time and the players showed that they had the character / ability to rise to the challenge and there was a notable improvement between the first and second half. Now that may have been partly due to Liverpool taking the foot off the gas a bit, but lets face it, even is this league most teams aren't going to play with the intensity of Liverpool
So in summary
Positives - One of the most, if not the most, difficult fixture in the league out of the way, Pukki scoring, Team showed they had the character to succeed and were able to learning quickly. Farke seem competent at this level.
Negatives - Defensive positioning, set pieces, speed / fitness is not going to help us out as much this year as it did last
Oh & just to add Newcastle is not a must win game. We didn't win any of our first 6 games last season and look where that got us